Naghmeh Nasiritousi

The emergence of mission-oriented climate policy marks an important shift from traditional environmental governance towards transformative societal change. Yet while missions explicitly seek systemic transformation, the conceptual foundations informing many mission policies remain rooted in relatively narrow understandings of change. They often privilege innovation, experimentation, coordination, and measurable targets, while paying less attention to the political, institutional, relational, and contested dynamics that transformation scholars identify as central to urban change. Drawing on empirical evidence from Swedish frontrunner cities participating in the EU Cities Mission, this perspective argues that mission-oriented approaches would benefit from engaging more systematically with contemporary urban transformation research. While mission approaches emphasise strategic direction and policy coordination, transformation research highlights the importance of local practices, learning processes, and the socio-material conditions shaping implementation. By more systematically integrating these insights, mission-oriented approaches can enhance their sensitivity to context, improve their capacity to account for uncertainty and resistance, and support more adaptive and reflexive forms of governance. This, in turn, could increase the effectiveness of mission-oriented policies in translating ambitious goals into grounded and sustained transformation processes. Specifically, we outline several dimensions of transformation – including institutional and structural, power and politics, as well as relational and adaptive dimensions – that could be improved. We conclude that integrating these perspectives could strengthen both the analytical foundations and practical implementation of mission-oriented climate policy.

The existence of silos across governance levels and sectors has been identified as a key barrier to effective governance toward sustainability transformations. Climate policy remains siloed between ministries, sectors, political cycles, and governance levels. While previous literature suggests ways to overcome such silos through top‐down political steering and institutional reforms, this paper asks whether silos could be bridged through alternative and more indirect means. Specifically, we examine perceptions of EU‐level officials on whether a research‐ and innovation‐rooted initiative like the EU Cities Mission can overcome silos in EU governance to advance effective climate governance at the local level. The mission approach is grounded in research and innovation, but it also seeks to foster coordination and collaboration to produce ambitious outcomes. This gives rise to the question of whether such an approach can overcome silos and advance systemic problem‐solving. The paper conceptualises the EU Cities Mission as a case of experimentalist governance and examines how policy officials and experts understand the role of the EU Cities Mission and its contribution to silo bridging strategies. Specifically, the paper highlights the use of normative and relational mechanisms, including tools such as shared ideas and visions, policy integration, leadership, and institutional arrangements. Through an interview study with 19 representatives of the Cities Mission governing bodies and experts, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of the opportunities and limits of mission‐oriented innovation policy in enabling silo bridging towards more integrated climate governance in the EU.

Climate change and biodiversity loss are intertwined challenges, yet governance responses are poorly coordinated. This incoherence risks policy inefficiency while reinforcing environmental degradation and social inequalities. This article introduces an analytical framework for analysing strategy coherence, defined as the extent to which a strategy is compatible with other strategies. Centring on the functions of strategies as governing tools, the framework dissects their premise, prescription, and politics. This enables identification of elements that generate synergies or conflicts and points of friction to address. We apply the framework to the EU’s Climate Target Plan and Biodiversity Strategy to examine how they address interdependencies between climatic systems, ecological processes, and communities. The analysis shows that apparent goal synergies mask tensions rooted in divergent prescriptions and political priorities, with important implications for policymaking and practice. The article contributes to conceptual knowledge on strategy coherence and empirical knowledge on EU climate and biodiversity strategies.

Calls to reform the United Nations Conferences of the Parties (COPs) climate negotiations have intensified, yet systematic empirical evidence on the reform preferences of key participants remains limited. Here, using a conjoint survey experiment involving state and non-state elite respondents comparing pairs of hypothetical reform proposals, we find broad support for reforms that enhance transparency and provide a stronger implementation focus to drive climate action. We see that non-state actors are more supportive of reforms that limit fossil fuel company participation and expand opportunities for observer engagement. Furthermore, most other institutional reform proposals do not draw substantial support. These results identify two possible reform pathways: to strengthen transparency and accountability, or to reorient COPs towards strengthening the implementation of existing commitments. More contested reforms, including changes to the consensus rule, the COP presidency and stakeholder representation, are less likely to succeed.

Democracies struggle to translate sustainability science, and public concern into sufficiently transformative actions. Ongoing polarization, politicization and disinformation extenuate this challenge. Some scholars suggest that deliberative democratic innovations can help to bridge science, public understanding and will formation, and policy implementation in the face of vested interests. In light of these challenges, we introduce deliberative mini-publics (DMPs), and why they are of interest to sustainability scientists. DMPs are distinguished from participatory methods more familiar to sustainability scientists by their random and stratified selection of ‘ordinary citizens’. An emphasis is also placed on facilitated deliberation, access to information and learning. Evidence shows that the particular conditions of DMPs can support more deliberative and informed reasoning and offer a considered public voice for decision-makers, fellow citizens and sustainability scientists. However, evidence of their wider effect on society and sustainability is mixed and warrants further examination. We draw on examples from emerging research and experience of DMPs to conceptualize three broad mechanisms for how they could potentially enhance the relationship between sustainability science, publics and politics. These differ based on whether they are primarily aiming to (1) inform policy-makers, (2) support public discourse, or (3) enhance transdisciplinary science. We also explore whether DMPs can challenge unsustainable systems and contribute to transformation through visioning, strategizing transitions, and scrutinizing the decisions of public agencies. We encourage experimentation and critical research on DMPs for sustainability transformations to test and better understand their potential.

After more than a decade of academic and policy debate about carbon border adjustments (CBAs) and their policy implications, the full implementation of the world’s first comprehensive CBA is now imminent in 2026 in the European Union (EU). Simultaneously, several other jurisdictions across the Global North are at various stages of implementing their own CBAs. With CBAs transitioning toward real implementation, it is vital to understand their implications for potentially vulnerable trading partners. To this end, we review the current literature on the economic and geopolitical impacts of the EU CBA mechanism (CBAM) on the Global South. Through taking stock of peer reviewed and grey literature, we conclude that the EU CBAM will lead to trade disruptions in the Global South, with some Global South countries particularly vulnerable to potential welfare losses as a result of these disruptions. The likely decrease in trade between the EU and parts of the Global South, and the associated economic impact, may in turn have wider implications for the international climate and trade regimes. Although the EU CBAM regulation does not exempt the world’s poorest states, the current upheaval in global trade presents an opportunity for EU policymakers and others considering CBAs to revisit exemption policies or explore alternatives for vulnerable trading partners. We conclude with outlining gaps in the current literature and propose directions for future study.

Policy Highlights: To achieve the recommendation stated in the chapter title, we propose the following: Stakeholders can be better engaged in energy efficiency decisions through the use of multicriteria models. Decision-makers should present trade-offs, such as cost and emissions, and combinations of acceptable solutions to various stakeholders such as the public, housing associations, regulatory agencies, and financial institutions. Decision-makers should adopt a user-centred approach to energy efficiency measures by encouraging stakeholder dialogues around decision-support tools (e.g. multicriteria modelling) to improve understanding of costs and benefits of measures. Decision-makers should identify opportunities for consensus building and mindset shifts about the wider benefits of energy efficiency measures by emphasising their social considerations. Using Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) perspectives can strengthen Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) led multicriteria models that visualise trade-offs as well as identify plausible conflicts among stakeholders.